My friend and founder of Techdirt and Floor64, Mike Masnick, has started a new venture called Step 2, a community brainstorming platform for asking about, suggesting, creating, and building models for success meant to be a place for sharing ideas, knowledge and real results of experiments from artists in the digital landscape. According to their website, “it’s not just about the ‘business’ model, but the overall ‘success’ model. How do you create that connection with the marketplace? How do you offer something worth buying? Step2 is here to help.”

I’m really proud and inspired by what he is trying to do with this. Rather than spending time focusing on what went wrong, more legislation, tighter controls, and whining, Mike and his team want to show and hear about what is going right, what experiments are happening and their outcomes (good and bad), and provide a forum where questions can be asked, ideas can be shared, and knowledge based on fact (instead of speculation and theory) can be found.

In order to spur the conversation, Step 2 is running a contest for the next 15 days for a chance to win $1,000 ($10,000 to be given away total). Here is what they are looking for according to Techdirt:

We’re looking for case studies from content creators in music, movies, books and video games and will award $1,000 to each of the top two vote getters who qualify in each of those categories. Separately, we’re also looking for fan case studies of how artists in any of those fields connected with you. Again, the top two vote getters will get $1,000 each.

The kinds of case studies we’d love to see:

Done an interesting/different/unique promotion? Tell us about it and share the results in as much detail as possible

Tried an email marketing campaign? What worked and what didn’t? Any key metrics?

Attempted crowdfunding? How did you set the rewards? What did people like/not like?

Used new or different platforms or technologies? What kind of results did you see? What could be improved?

Attempted something different — like a house concert tour? ebook-only release? letting fans take part? releasing unfinished works? What worked, what didn’t, what did you learn?

Experimented with “name your own price?” How did it work? What prices worked well? What efforts did you make to trigger certain price points?

Set up a tiered pricing model? How did you choose the tiers? What worked? What did you learn?

How are you connecting with fans? Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts? Google Plus? What works, what doesn’t? What really seems to energize fans? What doesn’t? Any empirical data that shows how your fans reacted?

Surprise us!

If you’re a content creator in any of the qualifying categories, please consider taking part. Some creators are always afraid to share too many details of their “secret sauce,” but many who have done so have found that the transparency itself leads to greater connection with fans and — perhaps more importantly — getting detailed info out there will help inspire others to do cool things too. Step2 is about learning and helping each other succeed in a rapidly changing world.

We are thinking about submitting a case study on Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul, if for no other reason but to share what we’ve learned through self publishing, sponsorship, giving away free copies etc. Of course, we won’t turn down an additional grand!

Even if you don’t submit, keep an eye on the site and add to the discussions. I would like to see people who have constructive things to say contribute, but there is quite a lot of fear in the film community and the most fearful are unfortunately the ones who just want to criticize and ridicule with comments on these sites. Prove me wrong, guys.